Miles was thinking about how to get the attention away from him after selling dual elemental orb. He thought of many things, and the two most plausible choices were executed perfectly.
First, he had the Shin family buy the seemingly unimportant envelope for the exact same price as the profit of the auction, so his money would be delivered to his account. So he wouldn’t give away any personal information nor would he show himself.
He also created a post box to buy his things without getting caught. He was only suspecting Mother AI, but he still took precautions just in case. Thanks to his paranoid nature, he avoided a calamity.
With the help of Coin, he created a legit post box address and construction order. Later he hired a shelf company he created to build the post box. He bought the materials through the company and went to build it himself.
The hole and slide were opened to an underground sewer system built decades ago. He found an entry point in the slums when he was hanging out with Cale, and followed it all the way to 123 Main Street. The best location was there, so he built a post box there and registered it in the mail system thanks to Coin’s ability to hack into government facilities.
When the package was about to be delivered, he was already waiting under the ground and Coin floated into the post box over the slide. The drones required authentication with the wristwatches, so Coin had to be there. But also, Miles had Coin to detonate explosives he had placed before after he secured the package.
After the slide and hole were destroyed, Miles left the sewer with a package and Coin and returned to the old industrial site. There, a brand new workstation better than what he had at home was waiting for him.
The building where he placed his lab was an old hideout he and his old friend once owned all the time. At the time, his friend’s father was somewhat rich and allowed her to buy the small land. He and his friend build their base with their bare hands. After she vanished, Miles never came again until now.
Not all of the orbs he purchased on Unizon from other shops. He opened the package and looked at the ten orbs. Half of them were new orbs while the other five were his orbs from the beginning.
He couldn’t trick Mother AI with the same method, so he created more than twenty shops in Unizon and put his own orbs for sale there. He sold them with extortionate prices to transfer money in Marooner's account to his other accounts evenly, in case he would need them later. After withdrawing money from some of them, he was able to buy the workstation.
There were two types of delivery systems in Unizon. One was to be delivered by Unizon itself. To do so, the seller had to deliver the item to Unizon, so Unizon would deliver it to the buyer. But it would leak the addresses of two parties. The other method was hand-to-hand delivery.
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For this, the buyer had to talk with the seller only after the purchase was finished, and would finalize the delivery. The buyer would be given an authentication code by Unizon, and when the seller delivered the item, the buyer would give the code to the seller, so when the seller entered the code, prepaid money kept in Unizon would be transferred to the seller. This method was less popular but it was there for a reason.
Firstly, distance. Although drones were fast, Unity was big. Not all the sellers and buyers were in the same city, so in case the seller and buyer were close to each other in Portal World, hand-to-hand delivery was more convenient.
Secondly, privacy. Some people cared about their privacy, thus didn’t want to use this method.
And the reason why the seller and buyer couldn’t talk before the purchase was done was simple. If they could, they would skip the Unizon and Unizon would lose the commission from the trade.
And the reason why Miles didn’t use this method to transfer his money to his other account was if he did, Mother AI would know those accounts were related to him and in the future, if he were to use those accounts, he would still alert Mother AI. But now, after using regular means to do the trade, and getting attacked, it was normal for him to not trust the site, seller, or Mother AI. If he were to choose the second option, no one could blame him now nor suspect those accounts.
The two of the five orbs he bought were a pinnacle-tier Gas Mask with the wind element and a high-tier Cape with the fire element. Unlike the cartoonish lion mask he acquired in Thunder Forest, the gas mask looked more functional. Miles was planning to merge two to create something new, so even his new two buddies wouldn’t suspect Miles of being Marooner.
The second was a cape with a fire element. He was planning to merge it with the spiky shield he acquired in the Thunder Forest. He still didn’t know if two different items could be merged, but he was planning to test it with lower-quality orbs first.
Besides planning to outrun Mother AI and deal with riches in the auction, Miles was killing in Portal World to find low-tier orbs and was looking for vendors in his free time. He acquired a few low-tier orbs and would test them with his brand new workstation.
“First is different tiered orbs. I doubt it will work. After all, the key to success is resonance. Without resonating wavelengths between two orbs, it is impossible to merge them. And two different tiered orbs shouldn’t resonate, but I have to try nonetheless.” Miles thought to himself as he fished out two orbs.
One of them was azure in color with a sword swimming in the azure sky. It was the wind sword he acquired in his journey. He killed the mantis queen for that sword and it was mid-tier. He was reluctant to waste it, but it was getting more and more inefficient in his hunting as the days went by. After all, he was getting stronger and stronger quickly.
The other orb was also a sword with the wind element. He didn’t have many elemental stones so his choices were limited. That is why he could only merge them according to the elemental stones he had. One of them was low-tier, and the cost was petty. So he bought it without paying any mind.
He placed the two orbs in two different boilers and cut the elemental minerals accordingly. He realized that the higher the orb’s tier, the more elemental minerals it required to melt. So, for higher tier orbs he had to spare bigger elemental minerals.
After two minerals were placed, he controlled the workstation to melt two orbs. Unlike his mother’s station, this was more out of date, but it was still one of the better ones in the market. Not long after two orbs started to shake, and merging time was close.